


The Sum of Educated People

by cereal



Category: Community
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereal/pseuds/cereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because life isn't a TV show, Jeff doesn't get to be a lawyer again right after he graduates from Greendale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sum of Educated People

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boundbyspells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boundbyspells/gifts).



Because life isn't a TV show, Jeff doesn't get to be a lawyer again right after he graduates from Greendale.

Even in Abed's TV show (which actually becomes a real TV show third year -- on the brand spanking new Greendale network -- motto: "Humans, being, on TV!"), Jeff's not a lawyer in the future.

No, the Jeff in Community College Chronicles goes on to open a university bar called Campus on the Green. This is mostly to set up a background for the next installment of the series because as Abed points out, "All the great TV shows have a place like that, The Max, Central Perk --" and on and on for five minutes and the history of sitcoms.

The Jeff in reality becomes a _consultant._

(Pierce puts in the initial capital and gives him a ton of referrals to get started. They all, every single one, pan out. It's _insane_.)

It's a fancy, vague career and he spends a lot of it telling people who are still lawyers how to do their jobs or telling PR flacks to listen closely to every instinct they have and then do the opposite, but he can take phone meetings in his pajamas and it gets him a lot of expensive kitchen fixtures.

Mostly, though, it just gets him a lot of frequent flyer miles and some Ambien-induced dreams about a life where there really is a Campus on the Green and usually he's Chandler, but once he was Ross and it was horrifying.

(Annie is always Monica and that's weird, but it's not until the dream where Troy puts on all Jeff's clothes and announces he's free ballin' that Jeff starts just watching E! over room service dinners instead of syndicated episodes of '90s sitcoms.)

He measures time by whatever Ryan Seacrest is reporting on and doesn't realize until a sparkly, _puffy_ bear trap shows up in his mail masquerading as an invitation that school's been over for a year. There's glitter on his hands for three days, like Lady Macbeth or something, until he finally calls Shirley to RSVP.

Since it's only been a year, there's nothing official from the school, but somehow it's being held in the study room and, well, here it is, Greendale Study Group One Year Reunion: The Fiesta.

It's not like he doesn't talk to any of them anymore.

He sees Pierce at "board meetings." (It's only a few weeks after he starts consulting that he realizes the money, the referrals, it wasn't business, it was, like, Pierce's way of staying friends. It made him feel a kind of guilt he didn't even think he was capable of, so once every couple of months, he invites Pierce over. He shows him made up charts and graphs and calls it "business associates," so Pierce doesn't realize he figured it out.)

He sees Troy and Annie and Abed at improv, which, OK, could he BE any more gay? Or whatever word isn't offensive but means whatever gay meant the second time around? (He's growing, he's grown, he's -- still kind of an asshole.) But it turns out he's really good at making jokes off the cuff (..._yep_) and, so, when he can, he shows up to screw around while Annie plays the straight man and Abed and Troy rap or riff or who the fuck knows. It's just, it's fun. And it's gotten him laid twice, which is more than a few other things he's done in his life ever have (cough, taking French fourth year, cough).

He sees Shirley on major religious holidays when she shows up in her car, honking in his driveway, to take him, forcefully (and once by his ear), to church. He was out of town on Easter a few months ago and he got a biting and passive aggressive note from the neighborhood association when he got back. There was something about angry black women crossed out for something less, oh, less _racist_ and he framed it and sent it to her. Apparently it's hanging in her kitchen, near a cross, a testament to her dedication to the Lord (or so she tells him).

He sees Britta -- uh. He saw Britta on a Skype call during the graduation ceremony. She was in London saving whales or saving people or saving something and he thought it was insane at the time, Annie holding up her laptop so Britta could see the dean say embarrassing things, but he kind of wishes now that there were a way to have saved it. Like a video he could watch later. And he sees her on Facebook, pictures of her with soccer hooligans (seriously, Britta? _Seriously?_), pictures of her in some lame British hippie office, but mostly he sees her in her relationship status. Britta Perry: Single. It was "Complicated" with some Irish fuck last December, but it's mostly single and he hates, _hates_ how much of an idiot he is for even caring. She left, right? With time still left in the year, she left. So, fuck her.

Or whatever doesn't make him sound 15.

It's two full weeks before the reunion that he finds some other bullshit to angst over on Facebook. (Why does he even have a Facebook account? Does he have to register as a sex offender now?) Annie's created a reunion Facebook group and there it is, unholy and tiny on his computer screen: Attending -- Britta Perry.

He is such a fucking _girl_.

If this were Abed's TV show -- and sometimes it feels like it is -- the screen would go all swirly and there'd be a flashback now. A flashback to Greendale and everything that maybe, somehow, led up to this. Led up to him sitting in a hotel room in Detroit, his MacBook with the faded Human Beings sticker on the cover ("Way to deface a $1,400 piece of technology there, Annie.") open and bright and reminding him there's a girl (a _woman_) he really likes out there and he just didn't have the stones to get her. That sounds like something Pierce would say and it's more than a little bit scary.

If _he_ were Abed, the things in the flashback would be the following:

His sleeping with Annie. Not like graphic porn type shit, but the whole thing. More like --

Second year, Jeff comes back to debate for the whole season. Apparently you can get an English credit for that and arguing is arguing, right? Or it's one less class or something. And all right, maybe he gets a little hot, reflexively, thinking about debate now. Annie all tiny and her mouth all wet and years before the Facebook account he probably should've registered as a sex offender.

Somehow it all comes back. Annie grows into herself, stops whispering words for certain parts of anatomy and suddenly they're unstoppable everywhere. They're at Regionals, then State, for debate and then they're in a hotel room in Fresno and he sleeps with her.

Because apparently he has some smidgen of tact, he never tells anyone that she started it, but: she started it.

Greendale wouldn't spring for two rooms, despite how bad Dean Pelton wanted the title, and so he's shaving in a mirror in their single room the night before the competition.

One minute Annie's watching The Daily Show on one of the two beds and the next, she's behind him in the mirror. She's just watching him, in her little button up pajamas and he gives her the eyebrows, but she doesn't move. She just looks at his chest in the mirror (he's not ruining an Armani undershirt just so Annie can keep the kind of dignity she'd lose at a public pool) and then scampers off back to the beds. For real -- _scampering_.

Less than 30 seconds later there's the kind of crash that makes the razor slip across his skin and he's bleeding, rushing out to see Annie mixed up in a pile of blankets on a collapsed bed frame, headboard bent toward her at sharp angle. She's got the face on that usually means Senor Chang is yelling or that she's gotten a bad grade and he honestly could never figure out what the fuck happened. It doesn't seem like she's even big enough to wreck a bed and when he calls down to the desk, they don't sound surprised. They also don't offer a solution. Or a rollaway.

They awkwardly climb into the remaining bed after Colbert Report.

He's approaching hour two of worrying about what's going to happen if he falls asleep and tries to spoon with her during the night, when he feels her breathing on his upper back. He rolls over, trying to see if she's asleep and is going to try and spoon _him_ and then, in the horrible red light of the alarm clock (one of four alarms Annie set for the next morning), he's looking her in the eye. It's that awkward high school shit and he _knows_ it, _knows_ they're moments away from someone leaning in when she just -- goes for it.

It's a lot more tentative and a lot less frantic than kissing her last year at the debate and he even has whole seconds to think himself out of it. He flies through a thousand reasons, 999 of them her age, and then her tongue slips out against his bottom lip and he just goes.

He only stops once, when he's leaning over her, right before, and he looks into her eyes again and suddenly she's not 20. She's someone who's been through a world of shit and who doesn't look afraid and some other hokey garbage about another weary traveller on the road of life.

He falls asleep covered in guilt and sweat and then he sleeps with her again in the morning, when the first of the alarms go off and it fades and it was just something they did. They lose State to some dicks from San Jose and it's not even weird. It really isn't. She yelps at him when he forgets a homework assignment two weeks later and he backs down when she starts crying about some phys. ed. problem. She moons over Troy and he flirts with Britta and then Abed outs them during exam prep.

How he knows is one of those weird, fucked up Abed things and he just says it matter of fact, like everyone else already knew, too. Britta glares at him and Annie doesn't do anything until Troy tries to high five him. Then she cries and leaves. And Britta follows.

He fails the test and the class and pretends it's because no one actually uses algebra in real life anyway.

So, that'd be flashback Numero Uno (what's up now, Senor Chang?).

Flashback _dos_ is Britta disappearing for three weeks at the start of their third year. No one can get ahold of her, everyone tries, and Annie's talking about the add/drop period and Shirley's fretting and so he goes over to her house. Of course it was going to be him. And she's there, on her couch, in dirty leggings and a dirty T-shirt, watching "It's a Wonderful Life" next to a pile of used Kleenex.

Her dad died and she fucking hated her fucking dad, hated him, but he's dead now and they'll never make up. It's a lot of movie plots and a lot of TV shows and it's a lot he's seen before except this is real life, it's reality, and Britta's lost 10 pounds she didn't have to lose (don't check if it's from her boobs, don't check if it's from her boobs) and seriously, shouldn't someone else be here?

(He's endlessly thankful it's him, he's the only one that could scoop her up and bring her into the bathroom and wash her face. He's the only one that would've made a joke about seeing her naked when he got her clean clothes, so he's the only one who could've gotten the tiny, exasperated smile she gave him.)

They never, ever, _ever_ talk about it. She's just in class two days later and Troy shows her how he learned to do that middle finger waggling trick and then they're back to normal. She still doesn't give him an inch and Abed still makes inappropriate comments about the sexual tension between them.

(If he never sees her face all puffy and bloated from crying again, it'll still be too soon. And not because she didn't look pretty. He's a character in The Notebook, sue him.)

The third flashback, the last flashback, barely even involves him, except the parts where it's all about him.

It's senior year or the last year or whatever they're supposed to call it when they're only nine months away from a degree from a _community college_. Abed's TV show has been picked up beyond the Greendale network, to some regional college station, and has somehow turned into work study. Annie's set up a cot in the study room so she can stay on track for valedictorian (of, once again, _community college_) and Troy went out for, made, and then captained, the track team.

It's the weirdest year yet and that's not even counting how Shirley's brownie business actually launched and made $20 in Bolivian money one month or how Pierce grew a handlebar mustache on a dare from Troy and Abed.

The part in the flashback, it comes halfway through second semester. Britta meets some guy in Cooking Club. (She goes vegan for a week and nearly starves. She decides, and loudly announces, if she's going to eat the flesh of animals, it should at least be prepared with dignity.) This guy, this douchenozzle named Art, he has tattoos and messy brown hair and listens to all the music Jeff has on his secret iPod (the one he doesn't bring to school because no one needs to know he listens to bands with zoo names like Grizzly Bear or Band of fucking _Horses_).

He's actually all right, in a way where if he worked at Jeff's old firm, Jeff would probably see the occasional stripper with him or trick him into picking up the tab on an assload of Johnnie Walker Blue. He's way less grating than Vaughn and when he presents his paper on Citizen Kane in film class, Jeff actually learns a few things.

It makes him want to give Art the Forest Whitaker eyes or, as Britta would put it, if he let on even the slightest bit, "whip 'em out and measure 'em, boys."

But because he doesn't, he doesn't let on, doesn't even rhyme Art with the most obvious rhyme, it's not about him.

Shirley, with her "profits" (Jeff doesn't explain about net gain or loss or anything that indicates because Shirley spent $50 making the brownies she didn't make a profit at all), decides to take everyone out for drinks. And they go, all seven of them and then Art. Eight is definitely enough.

The next day, Jeff's running late to study group (from his second car wash of the week). He's sprinting into the building when on the other side of the steps, with their backs turned, he sees everybody, which would be weird except that it's a nice day and Annie has begun extolling the positive affects of sunlight on learning.

There's some loud talking and Jeff can hear his name and Art's. Shirley's making her tut-tut face and then Abed's got his index finger up like he's making some pop culture point and, without thinking (or definitely, 100% thinking), Jeff's eavesdropping.

Shirley goes on about how he, Jeff, is a nice young man (Troy: "Jeff _is_ the man!") and she shouldn't string him along like that. Abed's saying four seasons is long enough or viewers will get disinterested. Pierce is talking about the needs of a man (now is not the time to loudly vomit). And Annie, organized, earnest Annie, has a chart out, with columns, and he can just make out his name and Art's at the top.

Britta looks angry, angry, angry and then barks, "You're RIGHT." She bolts off the steps and Jeff ducks behind a column.

He sees her for 10 minutes the next day when she announces to everyone that she's gotten a job in England with help from Professor Duncan (fucking _Ian_) and it's only temporary, but it could turn into something permanent and she has to go _now_. She'll take her finals via e-mail and, oh, everyone's welcome to come visit.

He sees Art in the quad a few days later and he mentions that Britta had broken up with him and does Jeff even know where she is? Because she, like, disappeared. Jeff can hear Ryan Adams, low and sad, from the headphones around Art's neck and he tells him the truth.

"She left, man. She's in England."

Art shakes his head and Jeff does the same because he can't stop and maybe when he gets home he puts on Love is Hell.

That's it, that's all three flashbacks. There's probably more, but it sort of just breaks down like that. There's the kiss first year and a drunken hug under some mistletoe another year, there's the time he brushed her boob accidentally-on-purpose reaching for a highlighter, but none of that means anything. Or it all means something and can you have a flashback that's really just a frame-for-frame playback of four years? Abed would probably tell him no (or that it's too experimental for most viewers).

In the two weeks leading up to the reunion, Jeff does these things:

\- Tries out and throws out new hair product  
\- Buys a new button down  
\- Wears it twice so it doesn't look brand new  
\- Saves a CEO and a company by discrediting a 19-year-old intern   
\- Checks Facebook obsessively  
\- Gives himself at least six talks in the mirror about being pathetic, ridiculous or pathetic and ridiculous

On the actual day of the reunion, he shows up half an hour late. It's the longest half hour of his life, waiting to be able to go without seeming like he cares, even with Khloe Kardashian's divorce special on in the background.

When he gets in the room, the table and chairs are mostly empty, with only Annie and Shirley there.

Well, shit.

"We lied about the time. It doesn't start for another half hour," Annie blurts it out, all fast and proud.

"We knew you wouldn't show up on time, Jeffrey. So silly, boys and their 'cool'." Shirley looks pleased.

He sits down and slumps into his chair, "Thanks, guys, what if I'd been doing something important and I rushed to get here -- and, oh, forget it."

Annie sticks a picture frame in front of him, one of those digital ones that holds a lot of images.

"You'll be the first to see this! Although I won't play it with the music until later." She's practically beaming.

He watches pictures flip by, Annie and Britta kissing both of Abed's cheeks, Troy making bunny ears on a studying Pierce, Jeff in a sombrero, everyone in sombreros.

The entire set passes three times, Annie and Shirley decorating in the background, before Troy gets there.

Annie rushes up to him and gives him a kiss before Troy pulls back and gives a head nod to Jeff.

"This is _new_," Jeff can feel his eyebrow arching.

"She kissed me during a sketch, man, and it was like, POW, and I was like, 'WHAT,' and she was like," Troy smiles huge and goofy, "And I was like, 'Yeah.'"

"So that's a thing with you, Annie? Kissing guys under false pretenses?" He regrets it as soon as he says it, but she barely notices, too busy making saucer eyes at Troy.

(Shirley gives him a dirty look.)

Abed sneaks through the door a few minutes later, in sunglasses no less, two pimply teenaged boys lugging camera equipment behind him.

By way of greeting he takes off the glasses and says, "Viewers want to see the real life inspiration behind the CCC. Can't deny the people what they want."

The boys start setting up cameras in the corner under Abed's direction just as Pierce saunters in, "Make sure you get my good side -- that's the left for my face and the right for my body."

It takes a few minutes but they all hit their rhythm, Pierce bothering Jeff about stock options, Troy looking inside one of the lenses while Abed makes frames around areas of the room with his fingers. Annie and Shirley finish hanging balloons -- Jeff can hear Shirley talking about a man from her church choir and how he's a nice man, but he's a diabetic and can she ever love someone who doesn't love her brownies?

(Annie sagely tells her that love conquers all.)

They start the party, music playing, pin the tail on Senor Chang (which gets awkward when Senor Chang shows up) and enough of Shirley's brownies to kill her church choir friend six times over.

It's not that he can't breathe every time he looks at the clock, because that would be stupid. It's just that he's clearly developed spontaneous asthma and he should probably go to a doctor.

Annie's announcing that the photo/music presentation will have to go on without Britta because there's a _schedule_ and then Britta walks in.

He doesn't move. Not one fucking inch. If he can't do something cool, he's not going to do anything at all. Saving -- face?

Her hair is longer, but she's still wearing that same leather motorcycle jacket from freshman year (even if it has a dopey Union Jack patch on the upper sleeve now) and everyone but Jeff swarms around her. Senor Chang says something in Spanish and Britta answers him back and is this it, are they all, like, grown ups now?

She looks at him over Shirley's shoulder and he gives her a wave, or half wave, half salute. It's not like he can feel his hands or anything. Fucking spontaneous asthma.

Abed says, "Wait, wait, wait, I missed that. Jeff, get back into position." He's behind his camera now. "If I don't capture this reunion, the documentary will be missing its emotional center."

Jeff cuts him a look and Abed says, "I can use that, too."

Britta jumps in, "You know, you have a huge internet following in England, Abed." He looks pleased. "My entire apartment building loves you."

Jeff's not sure if that means because Britta's shown them or it's some sort of random sampling from the whole Abed-loving country. Abed's face doesn't change.

It takes another fifteen minutes to get back to Annie's video/music slideshow (she's somehow rigged a projector to the frame and it's showing up on the back wall) and she turns the lights off and clears her throat to begin. Jeff watched the pictures enough times to know what he's looking for and it's not until the middle, so he gets himself some punch (spiked with -- tequila? -- by Senor Chang) and waits.

More pictures scroll by: Christmas Troy, Shirley giving a speech, Abed on a motorcycle -- and here. it. comes.

Jeff sleeping on a couch, Britta looking at him with a small, barely-there smile. It's a pretty innocent picture, but Jeff remembers that day, remembers the shirts they were both wearing. It was the day she came back to school after her dad died.

He's in a goddamn Sandra Bullock movie and it doesn't even matter.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye as the picture fills the wall. Her face stays the same, but he can see her jaw set and then, slowly, she turns to look right at him.

Because he's an idiot, all he does is raise his eyebrows again. Someday his eyebrows will fuse with his hair and he just won't be able to emote at all. He might have to actually _speak_ his feelings, god forbid.

There's a good 20 pictures left, but he stares at Britta (or she's staring at _him_, right?) through them all. When Annie finally turns the lights back on, he's thinking about going over to talk to Britta, but Annie just starts in on announcements, loudly.

"Because no one responded to my e-mail about ordering picture frames --"

(Jeff should probably check the e-mail filter folder labeled ANNIE once in a while, but the number just keeps getting higher and it's intimidating and also a sociological experiment.)

"-- there's just this one, so I've made a contest. Please write the name of the person you think most deserves the frame on a sheet of paper and place it in the _caja_ in the back of the room."

Troy turns the music back on and Annie gives him a look somewhere between hurt, adoring and irritated, and so over the sound of Shakira, Annie shouts, "In the next FIVE minutes!"

Jeff gets a personal escort back to the box from Annie not even a minute later.

(He writes down "Britta" because, let's be honest, there were a lot of really good pictures of _him_ and it wouldn't hurt for her to be able to appreciate that on cold, lonely nights in England.)

He still doesn't get to talk to her though. Pierce swooped in and hasn't let up. He can hear the words "business" and "partner" over and over again and he winces.

When she finally breaks away and gets over to Jeff, 15 minutes later (plenty of time for him to have come up with an opener), the first thing he says to her in a _year_ is:

"Let me see your teeth. You've probably grown complacent with your dental hygiene over there."

She gives him a half-smirk.

"Really? That's the best you've got? A joke about bad British _teeth_?"

"Hey, it was spur of the moment -- and I've had more than a few glasses of Chang's special punch."

"So you're drunk?"

"No, I'm just -- I'm --"

"You're --? Speechless? Not as charming as you think? Single-handedly keeping Axe Body Spray in business?"

"It's Burberry, but thanks for noticing. Uh. Smelling. Me." He'd probably be better off trying to actually have this conversation in Spanish.

This, turns out, is Annie's next contest. Who can speak Spanish the longest without saying an English word (or some equally complicated title).

As soon as the game begins, Jeff says, "Not me!" and goes to sit on the losers' couch. He's followed by Troy, Shirley, Pierce and then Britta, who, for reasons that aren't immediately clear, actually squeezes in next to him on the cushions. Their legs are touching all the way up, but she won't look at him.

Point: Jeff? Maybe.

Abed remains in the game for another five minutes by not saying anything, but when one of his cameramen misses Jeff poking Britta in the side, Abed breaks.

In the end, Annie wins (Senor Chang passed out an hour ago and wasn't eligible anyway, according to her very detailed rules) and gets to wear the Special Sombrero, which isn't much of a prize, but she seems happy.

There's apparently four more games on the schedule, but they never get to them. There's just a lot of talking and some awkward dancing and more punch.

When the party's finally over and Dean Pelton is at the door reminding everyone to clean up after themselves since their tuition doesn't pay the cleaning crews anymore, Annie makes one last announcement.

"The winner of the digital picture frame is --" She pulls the votes from the box and quickly counts them before looking confused and counting again.

"Why are there eight votes? Senor Chang, did you vote?" He lets out a snore in response. "Well, I can't just show people the votes to eliminate his, the integrity of the whole process would be ruined. I'll just have to count them all." It's pretty clear she's talking mostly to herself at this point.

"The winner of the digital picture frame is -- a tie between Jeff and Britta!"

Shirley claps and Pierce says, "I voted for Jeff because that frame will really liven the place up once we get our offices." Oh god.

Britta walks over to Annie, "You know he doesn't want it. I promise to display it proudly," she gives an exaggerated and solemn nod.

Jeff doesn't really think about it, he just blurts out, "Technically that's half mine."

Everyone looks at him.

"So either you go find one of those saws they locked up after the third shop class dismemberment or we work out a joint custody agreement."

"I'll bring it over on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other weekend," Britta's smirking again.

"Oh sure, you'll just fly back twice a week and then it'll be once a week and once a month and then we'll have to get the courts involved and that frame will start calling me Jeff instead of Dad -- "

"I don't think it's necessary to take a plane to your house, what are you, like, 10 miles away?"

Everyone gets it at the same exact moment.

Even though it's got to be the most exciting moment, cinematically, all night, Abed abandons the cameras. Dean Pelton, who stayed, lurking in the doorway, joins in, talking about how he's Mr. Belding and Pierce might actually be crying? So that's weird.

Jeff leads the charge for everyone to have a celebration glass of punch, but it's mostly just to get them on to something that isn't Britta. After they've all trooped back to the punch bowl, Jeff leans in to her.

"Awfully dramatic way to make that don't announcement, don't you think? Should've just hired a skywriter."

He can't even figure out anymore why he says and does the shit he says and does.

"Happy to have me back?"

"More like happy to have _me_ back."

What. What. What. _What._

She gives him a smile that usually means something, like that she understands or that (hopefully) he's endearing or exasperating or tolerable.

A few seconds later, Troy hands him a glass and tells him it's the last of the punch. He swallows it in one gulp.

They all finally leave. Nothing happens. He doesn't even hug her.

She changes her Facebook network back from London and beats his score in Bejeweled Blitz.

On Tuesday, he's packing for a trip to Ohio when his doorbell rings. She's standing there with the frame.

"He fought me the whole way here, but I explained it'd be good to spend some time with his father."

She hands the frame to him and he takes it, tossing it toward the couch. It would've been kind of suave, if the frame didn't miss and fall to the floor.

"Now you've brain damaged him. Child Protective Services is probably already on their way."

He says something back, some joke and she returns it, but he doesn't _hear_ any of it and then there's just nothing to hear. They're in his doorway, staring at each other in complete silence.

The lean in is something he considers himself pretty good at. He's tall and he can leverage it, bend down a little, make women feel like he could protect them from whatever they need protecting from.

When he leans in to Britta, it's like a square dancing bow, but she goes with it anyway. She even meets him halfway.

He's waited long enough for this that he's not going to let it turn into one of those tiny, tongueless, pecking kisses between friends, so he brings his hands up, frames her face and opens his mouth. Then he's pulling her toward him into the house and her arms are wrapped around the back of his neck and then she's got him up against a wall next to his shoe rack.

Her tongue is sliding against his and he can feel her hipbones under his fingers and her hands are in his hair and when they finally stop and she goes home, he looks in the mirror for five minutes, trying to figure out if he'd be able to duplicate what his hair is doing because it looks _awesome_.

(They stop like this: mouths wet, her face red from his stubble and his hand up her shirt. They stop _because_ of this: he actually, honest to god, gets a cramp in his back. She gets in a shot about how he's getting old before driving away.)

He goes to Ohio and talks to her on the phone about his day and it's weird and somehow more intimate than anything he's ever done. And then he does it again from Oregon and Indiana and Michigan and when she gets a job and he's at home, he texts her about how she's buying him dinner.

They fight. They sleep together. Her lease comes up and she doesn't renew. She moves in. The picture frame, broken since that first Tuesday, sits on a shelf. Britta throws a pile of laundry at him one day, misses and the frame falls and shatters.

She gets guilted into throwing the two year reunion at their house and when the party's over, another frame has appeared in the empty spot. They turn it on and it's just one picture -- everybody but them, Shirley, Pierce, Abed, Troy and Annie, holding a sign that says: Don't kill each other.

They never do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the gang at YF for moral support and, within that group, the ones that made sure I didn't crush myself under my TV when I finished. Also, thanks to Ryan Ross' future dom for suggesting a reunion story when I didn't initially see it and was panicking. Like, a lot.


End file.
